Railways to hire agencies for wholesale leasing of advertising space

After achieving excellent growth in passenger and freight earnings, the Railways has embarked on an innovative exercise to boost earnings – leasing out its advertising space through select agencies at the zonal level.

Making a departure from the earlier practice of retail leasing of individual hoardings, the Railway Ministry has directed its zonal offices to maximise ad space revenue through wholesale leasing of stations/group of stations/divisions through a process of competetive bidding to an agency.

Indian Railways is the largest provider of ad space through intrain and outdoor publicity space and the ministry officials believe that advertising and publicity contracts alone can generate revenues, which would be several times more than the total yearly earnings of Rs 50,000 crore.

In the first half of this fiscal year, the Railways earned Rs 25,467.91 crore of revenue, registering an increase of 15.74 per cent over the corresponding period last year and 4.89 per cent more than the budget target of Rs 24,279.91 crore.

The Railway Ministry has asked all GMs to ensure that all tenders concerning ad contracts are finalised within two months. It has also recommended that the licence fee of all the on-going earnings contracts be revised keeping in view their true potential.

Meanwhile, in a related development, Primesite, the Mudra Group arm specialising in out-of-home communications, has won Delhi Metro's 62 km wayfinding signage contract for which global tenders were floated.